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How Unique Is
Your
Internet Affiliate Marketing Business?
Copyright
© by John
Baril
One of the
fastest ways to earn money online is
to start an Internet affiliate marketing business. The great thing
about
affiliate marketing is that you don't have to handle, or stock, or ship
the
actual products as that is done by the company you are affiliated to.
All you
have to do is promote the products by posting your affiliate links in
various
places on the Internet, for example on your website, on your blog, or
in
classified ads and other forms of online advertising.
It is quite
possible to get an Internet
affiliate marketing business up and running in less than an hour. All
you need
to do is fill in a quick online form to join an affiliate company,
start a blog
at Blogger.com, which takes less than five minutes to set up, and
promote your
affiliate products by writing a few brief blog posts and insert your
links in
each one.
It is so easy
that anyone can do it. And that is
part of the problem. Because it is so easy to do, hundreds and
thousands of
people are doing it. Many of these people are promoting the same
products in
the same way to the same people. With so much competition around, it is
not
surprising that about 95% of affiliate marketers fail to make any money
at all.
When, after an
initial effort, no sales are
forthcoming, a lot of people simply give up. However, that leaves a
large
number of more motivated people who will not give up until they have
gone down
the well trodden path of optimizing their website for search engines,
posting
articles on article directories, investing in pay per click campaigns,
and
doing all the things that Internet gurus tell them they ought to in
order to
make money on the Internet. Even after they have done all these things
and seen
traffic to their website rise significantly, the majority of these
people still
fail to make any money. And since they have been investing more than
the first
group who gave up easily, they have probably lost more money and
certainly
spent a lot more time trying to make their business work.
So what has
gone wrong?
The problem is
that most of these people have
not sufficiently distinguished their Internet business from all the
others in
their niche. Making your business stand out by developing a unique
selling
proposition is especially important if you are involved in the
"Internet
affiliate marketing business" niche.
The two most
effective ways of developing a
unique selling proposition for your online business are:
(1)
Develop a unique product that you can promote alongside your affiliate
products. This could be in the form of an e-book, or a series of
training
videos, or some kind of service to help others set up a business
website and so
on. It will be much easier for you to sell affiliate products on the
back of a
unique service that demonstrates your expertise in the field. When
people know
that you are an expert and see that you have given them good advice,
they will
come back for more and they will trust your judgment. So when you
recommend an
affiliate product to your subscribers and customers, you stand a much
greater
chance of making some sales. Of course, you need to make sure that the
affiliate product you are recommending really is as good as you say it
is.
(2)
Personalize your business. Show visitors to your website that you are a
real,
friendly, competent and approachable person. Add a photograph of
yourself to
your website and blog. Even better, introduce yourself in a short
video. Use
your blog to talk about personal anecdotes as well as about business.
Add some
entertainment value, even some self depreciating comedy, and you will
keep your
audience entertained and coming back for more. They will get to know
you and
come to think of you as an online friend.
So, if you
don't already have a unique product
or an idea for one, you need to do some brainstorming. In the meantime,
you
need to get busy building your personal brand. If you're really stuck
for ideas,
go onto an Internet marketing Forum and ask for some help; the very act
of
joining a forum and asking for help is itself a first step towards the
personal
branding of your Internet affiliate marketing business.
I
wish you the best of success,
John Baril
Copyright © John Baril
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